Capabilities
The University Radioactive Ion Beam (UNIRIB) group has decades of frontline research experience among its staff and conducts its activities in world-class facilities at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
UNIRIB provides training as part of its effort to help the Department of Energy build a highly-skilled national scientific workforce. UNIRIB provides a university atmosphere within the structure of a national laboratory. The onsite staff provide dedicated experimental support to members of the consortium to conduct experiments as well as guide the training of students, from undergraduates to postdocs. Opportunities also exist for faculty to spend time at UNIRIB including extended visits such as sabbaticals.
In the past year UNIRIB has provided an enormous number of research opportunities. Those include 36 experiments conducted among 109 collaborators at 35 different institutions.
UNIRIB also shares its findings as part of the group's goal to expand the body of knowledge on nuclear physics. In 2005 those efforts translated to 46 published papers, 27 talks at international conferences, and three dissertations.
UNIRIB conducted the first summer school and workshop in the United States on radioactive ion beams in 2005. Twenty-three researchers from a variety of scientific disciplines traveled to Oak Ridge for hands-on experience with radioactive ion beams at the Holifield Radioactive ion Beam Facility. For most of the students, it was their first chance to study details of how the beams are produced and their use in science. The two-day workshop following the summer school session discussed emerging trends and techniques in the field.
Among its recent accomplishments, UNIRIB has:
- completed conversion of analog to digital electronics for nuclear spectroscopy research
- conducted measurement of waveforms of single particle states
- maintained ongoing development of targets and ion sources for radioactive ion beams.
